Vector clipping/joining trouble

[myxpykalix]

I went first to my shopbot training cd but there is no audio on it so i'll ask here.

If you look at "partial panel 1.jpg" you'll get a sense of what i'm trying to do. The areas hilighted in purple is what i'm trying to join because i want to take that depth down .25" and carve around the dentil molding (leaving the surface of the dentil molding at the 3/4" thickness). This then gives height detail to the rosettes and flutes. It carves the stiles and rails down .25".
Now if you look at "partial panel.jpg" you will see what my problem is. I created my rails as rectangles 4"x 24" and stiles 1"x24". So what i have is 4 rectangles that are independent of each other. To be able to make one toolpath to take it all down .25" and carve around the the dentil molding I need to join these sections. When i take the "trim vector" scissors and try to click on one line or the other the whole box disappears.
My theory is that these boxes need to intersect each other is that correct? Even when i had them intersecting i had the same problem. I was having problems with some other aspect earlier was why i offset them from each other.

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[mzettl]

Jack, if you overlap the rectangles, then use the "weld" fucntion, you should get what you are looking for, I think. I just did it to be sure. I created two rails and two stiles, overlapping the stiles into the rails, selected all of the rectangles, hit the "weld" button, and that was that. Took about 60 seconds.

Matt

[myxpykalix]

DOH! yeah when you know how it don't take but a min!!! that worked..
Now what i'm trying to figure out is in that when i make a toolpath that includes the 2 stiles and rails it will make the toolpath ok. But when i hilite the dentil molding and try to get it to cut that I get this error message:
"two or more of the selected vectors intersect themselves". What type of toolpath would i use (area clear, 2D profiling, ect)?
Would a better strategy be to go to the top rail and make a box covering the bottom 2 1/2" (below the dentil molding) and do an "area clear" on that, then not sure what type toolpathing for the dentil molding?

[mzettl]

Jack,

Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this. I think the solution is to make the dentil molding vector the top horizontal of the upper rail. In other words, rather than having a simple rectangle, you have a rectangle with the dentil molding along the top, all one vector. Then you just have to do an area clear, and it's done.

To integrate the dentil molding vector with the vector for the rails and stiles, you have to do some fooling around with node edit and the various merge/join vector functions.

The way I just did it was to draw a rectangle, cut the vector (a node edit function)at one of the top corners, then erase the top horizontal. The dentil block vector can then be positioned between the two verticals, then you can "Join Vectors with a Line" followed by "Close Vectors with a Line." You can make any minor adjustments in the Node Edit mode as required.

Hope this helps.

Matt

[myxpykalix]

I think i got most of that i'll post my rwesults after fiddling with it. thanks